I'm A Mom

Meet the baby!

He doesn't really look like this anymore. (He got cuter). (And bigger). That's all I have the brain capacity to say right now. Being a mom has been great so far. I feel very content.

Perhaps This Room Will Be Occupied, Someday

Baby K is three days past his due date. My midwife said that she's never seen a baby stay in there forever, but it's starting to feel as if he's permanently encamped in my uterus, with a foot sticking out just over my right rib.

If he does decide to come out, this is where he'll be living.

Yay nurseries!

I love nurseries. They're as close as a regular person gets to playing interior designer, with a dreamily unopinionated client 

The quasi-fox theme started from the bedding (crib skirt, blanket, pillow, changing pad cover), which is the "Woodland Tumble" line from Dwell. I figured we could use that with some of Scotty's nature photos, including the cutest picture ever of a baby fox (below center).

Safety police: no, he will not sleep with the stuffies and/or blankets until he's older; I'm not a monster; I know that the safest place for baby is swaddled on his back, strapped to a piece of plywood in a drafty room.

Obviously, Scott dismisses this photo as "an easy shot," as the kit was eating grapes outside the nature center, but whatever. Then I put a picture of a fox on my baby shower invites, and the fox-themed merchandise started rolling in, each thing more adorable than the last. Mom gave us Mr. and Mrs. Fox up there just last night, and they are the softest little foxes ever.

I didn't even mention the "Henry" cartoon (above left)! Scott's grandpa drew that on shirt cardboard when he was a kid - on Sundays they would copy drawings from the Sunday funnies. The reverse side says "Drawn by Pappy, Colored by Scotty." "Henry" was a real cartoon back in the day. I DIE.

The changing table is a shelf from IKEA, which has caught on to making their furniture in my preferred high-gloss finishes. The idea is that the top boxes with the doors will be for boring utilitarian things, and the bottom cubbies left open for baby to grab books and toys once he's mobile. He'll probably end up ripping off all the doors for sport, but we'll try.

Safety police: the pad is attached by snaps that screw into the furniture.

Below you can check out the Big Brother cam, which is propped up on the fin of a clay fish that I made in second grade.

I should probably change the picture of Dan to one where he's smiling.

And finally, my pride and joy, the Gobbi mobile:

I'll hang the mobile for him to gaze at starting around two months, but for now it can decorate the wall. Hung, the mobile serves two purposes: helping baby distinguish colors, and giving him something to bat at. I really liked the look and purpose of these mobiles, but they run around sixty bucks! Instead I made one out of styrofoam balls, embroidery thread, sweat, tears, and like a week of my life.

Pricewise, it's a high-low room. We spent a fortune on the crib, but I got the fancy bedding on sale, the chair is a hand-me-down from my old boss, and the rug, changing table, shelf, and frames are from IKEA. We got a bunch of the nicer gear - monitor, sound machine, changing pad, crib mattress, etc. - from my baby shower. People were crazy generous.

So yeah, that's it! Baby's room. Did anyone recognize the sweaty dresser?

Cranberry Pie

Deb of Smitten Kitchen is a genius. Her blog is fantastic and her cookbook wonderful - it's one of the favored few that lives next to my coffee pot on the counter instead of tucked away on a shelf. Her recipes are a creative in an "Of course! We've been such fools!" kind of way, where she puts a spin on a recipe that's so obviously better that you wonder why we haven't all been doing it this way from the start.

Anyway, there aren't a lot of blog recipes that I would try out of the blue for Thanksgiving, but I trust Deb. So when I mentioned that she had a new post about cranberry pie, Mom and I agreed that we should try it. Cranberries can be pretty tart, but this pie has a generous helping of pecan crumble on top to balance it out. Pecan crumble?! It must be tried.

Oh hai. The crust was super easy. I won't pretend I did an expert job with it, but it worked. The filling was simple, too - just a bag of cranberries dumped into a pot with some sugar, heated until the berries got a little juicy.

All of that got smothered in a combination of ground-up oats, pecans, flour, sugar, and a shitload of melted butter (Mom: "Do you need any more butter?" Me: "No, I think we're good." <> "Actually, leave out another stick"). 

Then you bake it off, serve it to great acclaim, go to bed, and spend the next morning watching your family eye each other as they circle the lone leftover slice for breakfast.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Almond-Kale Smoothie

I'm now officially on maternity leave, and I don't know what to do with myself. Today I went to IKEA, which was gloriously empty, but got so absorbed in the Home Organization section that I never ate lunch. Bad idea. 

I don't feel like eating much in general these days - a myth about pregnancy (for me, at least) has been that you'll eat everything not nailed down. What they neglect to mention is that this bingeing is followed by such horrific heartburn that you'll feel like one of those people on the posters for The Strain. So I eat a lot of "small meals," which translates to, once I'm about to pass out I eat some peanut butter.

Anyway, after several days of living on spoonfuls of the aforementioned peanut butter and bites of leftover pasta, I needed a vegetable. I needed it to be easy to digest. BEHOLD: the almond-kale smoothie.

This recipe is from our friend GP (sorry). It sounds disgusting but is actually pretty good. In theory, I drink one every day.

Almond-Kale Smoothie
adapted from "It's All Good"

1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 heaping teaspoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons health-food-store-type almond butter or (only if you have a Vitamix) a small handful of almonds
1 date*
smallish fistful of kale leaves**
2-4 ice cubes

Put everything in the blender, in the order above, and blend until completely smooth. Drink right away.

*The date is there for a little sweetness. I buy dates just for this smoothie, but if you don't have any just add some honey.
**I bet this would also be good with spinach, particularly if you aren't crazy about green drinks. Spinach is a little sweeter than kale, with no bitterness.

Little Conehead

Mom and Scott are on a wave of nostalgia with the first grandchild coming. They dug up this photo yesterday, where Matt can't be more than a few days old. As you can see, seven-year-old Meghan is totally focused on her baby brother, so much so that - oh wait, is that a camera, LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Swiftify

I've been strangely invested in the Taylor Swift-Spotify kerfuffle. In case you've been doing better things with your time: Taylor Swift and her label decided not to make her wildly popular new album, 1989, available on music streaming service Spotify. Most likely it would have gone up in a few months. Spotify responded to this fairly standard industry move by releasing a passive aggressive statement about how disappointed their users must be, and Swift/her label responded by pulling all her music from the service. I'm firmly Team Swift on this one.

A) Why on earth would she put her album up on a streaming service and lose a bunch of record sales? Swift is one of the few artists who actually sells albums - lots of them. She's the only - ONLY - artist to put out a platinum-selling album this year. Putting the album on streaming services would absolutely hurt her sales, and Spotify's royalties are a joke. Basically, they got mad that Swift decided to make money for herself instead of them.

B) Windowing (releasing a piece of entertainment on different platforms at different times - kind of like a movie being released in the theaters, and then on DVD, and then on pay VOD, and then a premium cable channel, and then basic cable/Netflix) is very common. Movies do it; TV does it. T. Swift wasn't doing some weird nefarious thing. Also, windowing is important. Mass entertainment is expensive to produce, and windowing gets it paid for. Everything should not be free. Have you ever watched the end credits for Game of Thrones? They're like seven minutes long! That show is awesome because hundreds of people work on each episode, and they aren't working for free.

C) I think that Spotify went after Taylor Swift at least in part out of sexism. "Oh, we can make this dumb blonde do whatever we want," is not something they probably said out loud, but a thought in the back of their executives' minds that shaped their (incredibly stupid) decision to try and manipulate the music industry's biggest star. I don't see Spotify making public statements about Thom Yorke or David Byrne or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of whom eschew the service.

It bums me out that Taylor says she isn't a feminist, but her "fuck you" move against the guys who went after her makes me smile. She might not say it, but giving a popular streaming service and their dumbass executives a public middle finger is very feminist indeed.

Fave Recipes: Almond Cake

One of my favorite recipes is the almond cake from Cooking For Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser. This is a very uncontroversial opinion. Liking Hesser's almond cake like saying, "whatever his politics, I admire John McCain's service record," or enjoying Adele's 21. Certain things unite us all.

Anyway, I've been making this cake since 2005. It's a dinner party go-to and pleases everyone who is not allergic to tree nuts. My only change from the original recipe is the baking vessel. Hesser has you bake it in two 8-inch springform pans, but a) I don't own two 8-inch springform pans, and b) it really does come out better if you dump all the batter in a tube pan (a very heavily buttered bundt cake pan works too). Want to get technical? This recipe has a relatively low amount of flour and eggs, which provide structure to the finished cake (the union of flour with eggs, butter, and sugar are what give cakes their nice domed tops). In a springform pan, this cake sinks instantly and tends to not bake completely in the center. But in a tube pan, the cake is coddled all around and doesn't need to rise so much, and you don't have to worry about the center not baking, because the center is now a hole. The cake will still sink, but whatever. Just trust me.

Almond Cake
adapted from, but mostly faithful to, Amanda Hesser, who got the recipe from her mother-in-law

INGREDIENTS
2 sticks butter, more for buttering pan
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour(measured after sifting)

1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
7-ounce tube almond paste
4 egg yolks, room temperature
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 teaspoon baking soda
Whipped cream/powdered sugar, for serving

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter sides and bottom of a tube pan.

Mix together the sour cream (or yogurt) and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside. In a mixer fitted with a paddle, beat butter and granulated sugar at high speed until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add almond paste, a little at a time at medium speed, and beat 8 minutes. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time, and almond extract. Add the sour cream/baking soda mixture and add to butter mixture. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually add the flour and salt, just until blended.

Spread the batter evenly into the buttered tube pan. Bake about 1 hour 15 minutes, until the top is golden and springs back when lightly pressed, and the cake shrinks from the sides of the pan. Cool in the pan on a wire rack before removing the cake.

Elizabeth (Amanda's mother-in-law) says: ''This is the Shar-Pei of cakes. It doesn't look very pretty; it crumbles on the edges and invariably falls in the middle. No matter -- it's still delicious. Store in a covered tin in or out of the fridge. It improves with age and can be made 1 to 2 weeks ahead.'' When ready to serve, sift powdered sugar on top and slice; serve with whipped cream.

***BREAKING NEWS: Amanda now makes this cake in a food processor, which pulverizes the almond paste better and changes the texture of the finished cake crumb. Because this cake, in my opinion, is already perfect, I haven't tried it. But FYI. 

Thanksgiving Volcano

It's that time of year... when every food publication desperately tries to find a new way for you to make turkey. Brine it! Fry it! Roast at high heat! Bake low and slow! Accept that half of it will be dry! Never give up on moistness! Bless those food writers - the Thanksgiving meal never changes, but they WILL find something new to say.

Anyway, at my vegetarian mom's house, Thanksgiving is pretty easy, as she opts for the "No Turkey" turkey recipe, which is just "don't buy a turkey and make extra mashed potatoes."

In my opinion, the best part of the Thanksgiving meal is making volcanoes the next day. You don't make volcanoes? MAKE VOLCANOES! Volcanoes are a wondrous Momofuku creation of bread dough, stuffed with scalloped potatoes, caramelized onions, and Gruyere cheese. Our household version incorporates mashed potatoes and gravy, as well.

It really is the perfect use of leftovers. Try it!

Cheesy Caramelized Onion VolcanoesAdapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook

NOTE: Don't be scared that you have to make a bread dough - it's the easiest dough recipe out there and can be used 45 minutes after you stir it together. The original recipe yields 4 giant volcanoes, but I make them a little smaller to get 6.

Ingredients

• 1 recipe Mother Dough (see below), risen
• 1 recipe Caramelized Onions (I am not including the recipe for this. Just slice three onions and saute on medium-low heat until they're dark brown)
• leftover scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, and/or gravy
• 1 egg
• ½ teaspoon water
• 1 cup shredded Gruyère cheese (or white cheddar, parmesan, etc. - any hard, sharp cheese)

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 375.
2. Punch down and flatten the dough on a clean, dry surface. Cut the dough into 6 equal pieces. Use your fingers to gently stretch each piece of dough out into a mini pizza about 3-4 inches wide.
3. Divide the onions equally among the rounds, scooping them in the center. Cut your leftover scalloped potatoes into small squares and lay on top. Plop on a tablespoon or two of mashed taters on top of that. Quantities depend on how many leftovers you have, but don't be too heavy-handed, or the volcanoes will break. Spoon over some gravy.
4. Take the edges of each dough round and pinch together to seal so that there is no speck of onion or potato in sight, then gently roll the ball between the palms of your hands to ensure the volcano has a nice, round, dinner roll–y shape. Arrange the volcanoes, seam side down, several inches apart on a parchment- or silicone-lined baking tray.
5. Whisk the egg and water together and brush a generous coat of egg wash on the buns. Use a paring knife to cut a 1 inch-long X in the top of each volcano. Divide the cheese evenly among the volcanoes, stuffing it into the X in each one.
6. Bake the volcanoes for 25-30 minutes, or until the dough is a deep, golden brown and the cheese on top is caramelized. You may need to turn on the broiler at the end. They are best served warm, but allow them to cool for at least 10 minutes before digging in. Leftover volcanoes can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge once cool. Heat up before eating.

MOTHER DOUGH

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups bread flour
• 1/2 tablespoon kosher or sea salt
• heaping 1/2 teaspoon active dried yeast (you technically want 1/2 plus a 1/16 teaspoon if you have the ability to measure those sorts of things)
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water, at room temperature
• vegetable oil
• 
  
• Instructions

1. Stir together the flour, salt, and yeast in the bowl of a free-standing electric mixer—do it by hand, using the dough hook like a spoon. Continue stirring by hand as you add the water, mixing for 1 minute, until the mixture has come together into a shaggy mass.
2. Engage the bowl and hook and have the machine mix the dough on the lowest speed for 3 minutes, or until the ball of dough is smoother and more cohesive. Then knead for 4 more minutes on the lowest speed. The dough should look like a wet ball and should bounce back softly when prodded.
3. Brush a large bowl with oil and dump the dough into it. Cover with cling film and let the dough rise at room temperature for 45 minutes.
4. The dough is ready to be used as directed in the following recipes. If you do not plan to use your mother dough the day you make it, you can store it in an airtight container at least twice its size in the fridge for up to 3 days. Take it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature 30 to 45 minutes before using.

Soon

They serve this at the hospital, right?

image via

Formerly Slow, Bataan-Style Death March to Gear-Based Baby Preparation Gets Helicopter Ride In Form of Baby Shower

My baby shower was this past weekend! It was great. My mom knocked herself out finding a great space and directing all the catering herself, and the guests showed their appreciation by giving me a ton of stuff.

All of the good pictures below were taken by the incomparable Dennis Kwan (thanks Denny!), whom you should hire for your next event.

There was LOTS of food:

Lots of gifts:

WHO named this product? It's actually pretty great, but the name... yeech.

And lots of friends and family:

It was a great day. Lots of love. And, as you can see, we're now totally ready for baby.

T Minus 6 Weeks...

Progress!

Six weeks usually seems like a long time to me, but in this case, not so much. 

He can take his time - but I'm pretty psyched to hold this guy with my arms instead of my abdominals.

Gear Accumulation Continues

What is it about a stroller that makes it seem real?

As you can see, we've accumulated quite a bit of pint-sized stuff recently. My baby shower was last weekend, and it was perfect, but that's a post of its own. 

Why The Grand Jury System Is The Dumbest On Earth

Another post I never finished! This one is from November 2011.

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When I was on a grand jury last year, I would frequently tell people, "I'm on grand jury duty, to explain my horrible mood.  They would invariably ask what case I was on, and I would tell them the following:

In New York, grand juries don't hear one case or decide outcomes: they hear about thirty cases over two weeks (unless you have particularly bad karma and were selected for a month) and decide whether to indict or dismiss them.  The grand jury decision does not have to be unanimous - just 16 out of 23 have to agree - and does not have to indict all the charges.  For instance, someone could have been arrested for possession of a weapon and then also charged with marijuana possession after the cop frisked them and found a joint: you could indict for the gun but not the pot if you so chose.  The 22 of us (it's usually 23, but Juror #23 spoke no English and was excused in the first hour, the lucky bitch) had one identity theft case that left us waving pitchforks and a child abuse case that was satisfying to indict, but the vast majority of cases were petty crimes: stolen cell phones or $10 drug deals.  There were long stretches of nothing, during which I read several books, bitched about life with Juror #8, and caught up on every episode of WTF with Marc Maron.

One of the worst parts of grand jury was that after telling someone about being selected, said someone would invariably ask with a condescending smirk why I didn't "just get out of it," or - decoded - "are you the stupidest person alive?"  Answer: I hope you get a grand jury summons next week, asshole, and see how you fare.  The only effective excuses for getting out of grand jury in Brooklyn are:

• I don't live in Brooklyn.
• No habla ingles, 我不講中文, Nie mówię po polsku, আমি বাংলা বলতে পারি না, etc.
• I'm a felon.
• I don't work and have a small child with no one to watch them.

Everyone else is selected, and they don't care if you're a racist. In other words, if you have not committed a crime, speak English, and use responsible birth control methods, the county of Kings would like to reward you with two weeks of indentured servitude, and they will be complete dicks to you throughout the process.  One warden screamed at me when I asked when our break was, and then screamed at me at random intervals for the rest of the day until I complained to his supervisor.  The ADA bureau chief made rounds about court on a daily basis, leaning on the court stenographer's box during our breaks, gleefully asking how we were doing and giving delighted lectures about how much worse it could be when we said "terribly."

But that isn't the point of this post: that jury service sucks is not news.  But many seem surprised when I get into the ins and outs of how RIDICULOUSLY skewed the indictment process is, so I shall outline some of the reasons here.

In general, defendants don't speak at a grand jury hearing. Usually no lawyer appears on the defendants' behalf. Jurors hear statements from two or more witnesses, generally the victim and a cop, are read the charges (we were not permitted to keep a copy of the statute for reference), and then left alone to vote. We indicted almost everyone. Why wouldn't we? We only heard from the prosecutor and the cop. The few times we argued about a case were the few times a defendant showed up and testified (if you ever have a case going to a grand jury, ALWAYS go testify. Almost no one did for us, but it always made a difference). About halfway through the process Juror #8 and I decided to stop voting to indict any charge relating to pot. This really pissed off Juror #19.

As the indictments piled up, I realized what we were doing. Most of the cases, although technically felonies, were for petty crime. We asked one of the DAs what kind of sentence the defendants would get if found guilty at trial, and he told us that almost all of them would get worked out in a plea deal. So we were arranging for a bunch of mostly young, mostly black, mostly men to have felonies on their records for snatching someone's phone. It felt like we were part of a conspiracy to render a large section of New York's population permanently unemployable. GREAT USE OF RESOURCES, CITY!!!!

This Is A Rescue Teacup Pig Wearing Chanel Sunglasses

Just FYI.

via

Morning Adventures

I had to take a different route into work this morning, and it made me feel like a Haruki Murakami character. Specifically, like Aomame from 1Q84, which is kind of unfortunate as that book sucked.

On the street, everyone had their phones pointed toward the sky, taking photos. Of what I couldn't figure out - I thought it was an office building. I looked next to the office building. It was the World Trade Center.

On my first transfer, I saw a man with two nickel-sized moles on each side of his face, with clusters of four-inch long wiry hairs protruding from each one.

In the subway station, waiting for my third train, an animated middle-aged man repeatedly looked at me and then pointed at a another man sleeping in his seat, inviting me to join in his delighted mockery. At one point he poked his finger into the empty space inside the sleeping man's mouth.

I waved my arms for him to stop. People willing to sleep in public have nothing to lose.

Once in my building, I saw several Tonight Show security guards escorting what had to be a famous band, so I looked up who's on tonight and deduced that I spotted Julian Casablancas.

This whole time I had to pee, and had that latent "will I vomit?" feeling from taking a new and disgusting liquid iron supplement before leaving the house. Maybe I should just take the anemia.

2011 Rock Memoirs: A Comparison

I wrote this post in April 2011 but never posted it, so here you go:
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I finally finished Life, the Keith Richards memoir, last night, after blitzing through Patti Smith's gorgeous Just Kids in Costa Rica. My absence of qualifiers for Life (because, as you'll see shortly, I have many for Just Kids) stems from not really knowing what to say about it. I got more out of its reviews than from the book itself, which is a name-dropping mishmash of Keith's random memories, coupled with several incredibly boring sections on tuning guitars.

The best bit comes from his oldest son Marlon, who weighs in with a few anecdotes and 100% needs a memoir of his own. While it's all well and good to read twelve pages about how much heroin Keith feels you can take without going overboard (he is particularly unrepentant about his drug use), Marlon went on the Rolling Stones '74 European tour when he was ten. Did Keith ever kick groupies out of his dad's room? Did he spend his early adolescence living in a succession of stately Long Island mansions with his just-recently-not-estranged grandfather and a random junkie? Was he in the house when his mother's seventeen-year-old boyfriend blew out his brains playing Russian roulette? Dear lord, Marlon Richards, the fact that you are now relatively normal and married with children is a mind-bending proposition.

The book wasn't bad. I just thought it would be better, particularly when I compare it to Just Kids.

A few years ago Dan and I went to some kind of Buddhist center benefit at Carnegie Hall, featuring My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens, and Patti Smith. The crowd was politely detached throughout most of the evening, until Patti Smith came on and forced us to engage. She was going out into the crowd with her microphone, standing on the seats, waving for people to gather around her and sing along. Coming from anyone else, you would have been cringed, but you could tell that this woman had earned the right to demand our enthusiasm.

Anyway, Just Kids details her first years in New York City as a struggling artist, nascent performer, and immediate mirror for Robert Mapplethorpe. Together they lived in a variety of condemned lots and eventually the Chelsea Hotel, and even after he had discovered his homosexuality they remained fiercely devoted to one another. "This book is so honest and pure as to count as pure rapture," reads Joan Didion's blurb in the front flap, and that about sums it up. It's romantic. Romantic about that early relationship, romantic about life in sixties New York, romantic about art and the life of a poor young artist. The New York she depicts - the New York I romanticized myself up until I moved there - no longer exists, which is a downer. The book, however, is not.

I Guess This Is Growing Up

We ditched a lot of our furniture when we moved. "I'm making Dan get rid of his dresser," I told my mom. "Oh..." she replied, "you mean the one that's made of cardboard?"

The idea was to buy new, nicer furniture, that we'd keep for a long time. Furniture that was carefully selected, rather than dug up from Mom's basement or picked off the trash. Grown-up furniture. 

Grown-up furniture is great, but it has its own pains.

Our dining table arrived today. It's beauteous.

($) Our last apartment was too narrow for such an extravagance, so we ate off a desk. A dining table that was actually designed for dining means we could fit more than two chairs around it. So I ordered a few more of these:

($$) But that's not all! The new apartment has a big granite island in the kitchen/living area, requiring new stools in order to sit at it:

($$$) All that together cost about eleventy billion dollars. But what of clothing storage!? Although we have two (!) closets in our bedroom, a luxury I've done without since 2006, t-shirts are in boxes on the floor. So I ordered a pair of blue dressers, to be arranged as in the photo below:

($$$$)

We haven't bought a couch yet. ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)

Finally, Dan and I have been test-driving cars and looking at local day cares (∞ $). Like David Sedaris, I tend to sweat when discussing sums over sixty dollars, so the large cash outlay, while not unexpected, has been giving me The Shivers. Raising a child I can handle. Buying that child a dresser? AHHHHHHHHRGH.

Meghan's Pregnancy Tips

I'm in the third trimester now, which is terrifying. Although I wouldn't mind unscrewing my belly and putting it aside for a few hours to enjoy a walk, a beer, and taking a full, heartburn-free breath, it hasn't been bad. The scary part is how much is left to figure out and prepare for, but I guess it's happening either way. Pregnancy hasn't been as bad as everyone led me to believe it would be, so I'm hoping parenthood will be the same way.

In that spirit, here is what I've learned in the past seven months:

1. Fuck the internet. This was a parenting tip, but I apply it to pregnancy as well. The internet is a great place to convince yourself that everything you've done will make your unborn child grow gills. Don't do it.

I guess that means you should ignore the rest of this list. Whatever, it's up to you! Fuck the internet!

2. Do wait to tell people. I had a miscarriage before this pregnancy (remember how depressed I was last year? Yeah) and while I'm glad that I had already told our family and close friends about the pregnancy, I was also glad that I kept my mouth shut to everyone else. If you can't imagine telling someone that it didn't work out, or don't think that they'll be able to support you, don't tell them until the 14-week mark. Some people really impressed me with how they stepped up the love and support. Others did not.

3. Enjoy the seven pounds that will melt off right in the beginning because you can't have a daily beer anymore, and try to ignore the fact that you were carrying around seven pounds of beer weight.

4. If you want a subway seat, wear tight clothes. No one will give up a seat unless they are 110% sure that a woman is pregnant rather than bloated. New Jersey PATH riders give me seats all the time, and I LOVE THEM for it.

On the flip side, if a NYC subway rider gives up their seat, it merits a press release.

5. Personally, I think that life is too short for uncomfortable clothes. If you buy and wear maternity clothes early, they'll amortize over a longer period of time. You're going to need them anyway, so skip the belly bands or whatever and just buy some stretchy pants as soon as your regular ones stop closing. Liz Lange for Target: write it down.

6. Take it easy. You're growing a human.

7. Learn what could give you food poisoning vs. what could give you listeria, and then don't eat anything that could give you listeria.

The FDA says it's ok to eat pasteurized soft cheese (probably 90%+ of the soft cheese available in America). You can have one caffeinated beverage per day in the beginning and a little more later on. Even sushi is pretty much ok. You should definitely not eat deli meat, hot dogs, queso fresco, high-mercury fish (cooked or not), or raw sprouts. Very little to no booze. That's kind of it. You can even eat runny eggs if they've been pasteurized. People ask if I miss coffee and I'm like, "nope!" Because I STILL DRINK IT.

However:

7b. All of that said, I know that if I ate sushi or oysters, I would spend the next two days analyzing every single stomach gurgle. If indulging your paranoia makes you feel better, then live on Luna bars. Whatever works.

8. To quote Hitchhiker's Guide: DON'T PANIC.

I could use some help with #8.

@bethostern

I recently started following the Instagram account of Beth Stern. Beth (we're very close at this point) is a model and animal welfare advocate who is married to Howard Stern. She has the BEST LIFE EVER. Here she is sunning herself on the balcony of her and Howard's oceanfront Hamptons compound.

But I don't say "best life" because of the enviable real estate/bikini bod. It's the kittens. Beth fosters kittens. Her feed is 90% kitten photos. All day. Every day. 

Like I said: best life ever.

Never one to keep my obsessions private, I immediately clued in some fellow feline-crazed coworkers. Soon enough, we were sending each other screenshots of her cutest charges on a semi-daily basis with messages like "I CAN'T!!!!!!!"

Beth's own cats are the cast-offs - the blind, the in-bred. For example, Yoda, below with the squashy face, has a heart defect. He spends his days in the foster room, grooming the kittens. He is REALLY adorable and entertaining, and unless some miracle of veterinary science manages to keep his heart going (fingers crossed), the day he dies is going to be a rough one in the office.

Anyway, one day, while skimming the comments on a particularly adorable photo, I saw that Beth has an email address for people wanting to adopt her fosters. 

(Side note: when you foster kittens, you don't keep them. You socialize the kittens with lots of human interaction so they'll eventually make good pets, and help keep the shelter less crowded. Once the kittens are two pounds (!), they can be spayed/neutered and put up for adoption. Carla and Bianca were Mom's first foster kittens). 

I sent the email address to my co-worker, whose beloved family cat died earlier this year, and who had mentioned that they were finally ready for a new cat. She immediately freaked out and wrote a long, touching missive to Beth.

It was a BRILLIANT email. "Now is not the time for subtlety," she said, showing it to me. It included many photos of their deceased family cat, displaying his integration into their family life. There was a Sears-style Christmas card photo of my co-worker at age nine with her sister - and the cat. There were photos of Socks as a kitten, and as an old, happy house cat, to show off their track record as a "forever family." She threw in a shot of Socks at home, so Beth could see that they live in a nice house and aren't paupers. 

It worked! Beth wrote back, and the process was started. My co-worker is adopting Archie and Dweezil, below, and their two thousand Instagram likes. 

Cat ladies are the best. I once asked my team if they went home at the end of the day and complained about how I make them look at pictures of Carla and Bianca like, sitting around. One of them gave me a look and held up her new iPhone case, emblazoned with a cat and the caption "CHECK MEOWT." We squeal equally over kitten photos and shots of our fat old family cats doing nothing. "But LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!!!!!" we squee. "LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS JUST SITTING THERE!!!!!"

The Skybrary

This was published ages ago, but in case you missed it, this is Elizabeth Gilbert's old writing studio, aka "The Skybrary." 

It recently sold, because she can only write one book per location. PROBLEMS.

Dear Lady Who Raced My 5.5 Month Pregnant Self To An Open Subway Seat This Morning And Then GOT MAD When You Lost,

You are terrible.

Sincerely,
Me

We Picked Out A Crib

Let the heavens part and angels sing; all shall rejoice: we purchased a crib! I put waaaaaaaay too much research into this, to the point where I was correcting salespeople and even my mother was like, "you need to cool it." So today, as a break in our day of packing, Dan and I walked down to Mini Jake, a baby store in Williamsburg. I didn't think we were going to make a decision - I just wanted him to look at some of my finalists - but sometimes seeing your crazy reflected in the eyes of another is sobering. So we picked one.

Behold, the Oeuf Sparrow!

Clean lines. In stock. No weird swoopy-looking things. 

And now I promise never to write about cribs again.